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Henley busy with nonprofit work, Eagles project
02/05/2007 10:00 AM, Reuters
Tamara Conniff
Most people know Don Henley as the
multiple Grammy Award-winning founding member of the Eagles or
as a successful solo artist.
His peers know him as an artist's champion, the man who
cofounded the Recording Artists' Coalition, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan group that takes action against faulty accounting
practices and unfair label contracts and advocates for
legislative issues on behalf of recording artists.
Very few know Henley as an environmentalist. But that cause
may be closest to his heart. In 1990, he founded the nonprofit
Walden Woods Project, which helps preserve the historic Walden
Woods, a 2,680-acre ecological area surrounding Henry David
Thoreau's Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Henley also founded the
Caddo Lake Institute in his native East Texas. This foundation
sponsors "ecosystem-specific" projects, such as underwriting
local wetland science and conservation education.
Henley will be honored at the 2007 MusiCares Person of the
Year dinner and concert February 9 at the Los Angeles
Convention Center for his professional and philanthropic
achievements. All proceeds from the annual Grammy Week event
benefit MusiCares, a nonprofit organization that offers aid to
musicians and others in the music business in times of
financial, medical and personal need.
Known for his candor and sharp wit, Henley spoke about his
environmental work and the next Eagles album in a recent phone
interview.
Q: You're a very active environmentalist. Why?
A: That's an ongoing thing. I always laugh and say I
probably could have made three or four more albums if I wasn't
trying to save the planet. It goes back to my upbringing and my
high school years. I was not a very good athlete, so I
gravitated to the arts and literature. I had a few very good
teachers in high school and college. I discovered Thoreau when
I was in high school, and I discovered Emerson when I was in
college. Their writings meant a great deal. Especially during
the time when my father was so ill before he passed away, I got
a lot of comfort and strength form those writers ... and then I
moved to California.
Q: What made you start the Walden Woods Project?
A: In early 1990 I was watching CNN and I heard them
mention Walden woods. I stopped what I was doing and went over
to the TV set and saw these two gentlemen standing in a wood
talking about how somebody was about to build a giant office
park, one of my favorite oxymorons -- an office "park," with
parking for 150 cars very near Thoreau's cabin site at Walden
Pond. I got on the phone. Now, we're in our 17th year. We've
raised a lot of money. We've successfully stopped three
commercial developments in Walden Woods, and we have purchased
about 160 acres. We also built a library and a
climate-controlled archive. We have the world's largest
collection of Thoreau-related materials.
Q: How did majoring in English in college and studying
Emerson and Thoreau influence you as an artist?
A: I'm a fairly mediocre musician, but I like to think of
myself as a singer and a lyricist, and I read a lot. Thoreau
and Emerson and all the other great writers I've read really
helped me in the music business in a way that I never
anticipated when I was in school. I majored in it anyway, just
because I enjoyed it, but I was wrong. I'm still not a lyricist
on the caliber of Randy Newman or Paul Simon, but I aspire to
be, and I hope that my best stuff is yet to come. I'm working
on it.
I was lucky. My dad never finished the eighth grade. He
lived on a farm in Texas, and in the years leading up to the
Great Depression he had to quit school and go to work in the
fields to help support the family with his brother and sister.
It was his lifelong dream that I would go to college, and he
saved up money to help me do that. While some of my
environmental and educational endeavors may have taken me away
from creating more "product" in this business, it's been a very
rewarding and enriching part of my life and enabled me to write
what I did write and what I'm going to write. I have no regrets
in getting sidetracked with some of my nonprofit endeavors.
Musicians are my favorite people. I don't think there is
anybody I'd rather hang out with. They have the best sense of
humor and are honest, down-to-earth people, most of them. But I
also don't want to be one-dimensional. I want to have a life
outside of music business stuff. I don't want to sit around and
talk about drum sticks all the time.
Q: When will you release the new Eagles album?
A: When it's done we will. Sometime in the next 60-90 days.
We want to get it out before the summer. We've had a few
interruptions. We've had a few distractions. We've had several.
Q: How is the recording going?
A: Some days it feels good. Some days it's challenging.
It's exhilarating. It's worrisome. It's joyous. It's all of
these things. It's a big mixed-emotions kind of thing. It
always has been. It's no different from what it ever is. It's
just that there are more distractions now with families and
charities and lawsuits.
Q: Many in the business condemn the Eagles' exclusive deal
with Wal-Mart.
A: We've gotten a lot of flack for it. On the other hand,
people keep on saying we need a new business model, we need a
new paradigm, we need somebody to do something, so we stepped
up and did something. Wal-Mart is getting their environmental
and labor act together. We did our homework, and they are
putting some innovative programs in place ecologywise. They
can't be any more evil than a major record label, that's the
way I look at it. We'll see what happens.
Reuters/Billboard
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